Recent stained glass restoration

This stained glass piece was a complete restoration. The original one accidentally dropped and cracked / broke in several spots, not to mention the lead channels were too soft.

I use the "copper foil" method, which means the pieces need to be shaped much more precisely and copper foil placed for the solder to adhere. This took about 2-3 months to complete - there was a significant amount of work that went into the restoration process.

This is actually the first piece I have ever restored - mostly I have made pieces from scratch and used a template. For this job, I had to first cut out the existing pieces from the lead channels ("leaded glass"), and arrange them on my desk according to the original. I used the picture I took in order to follow the pattern.

Then, when the pieces were finally all laid out properly (broken bits and all), I needed to remake several pieces. The red poinsettia glass was extremely difficult to find as it is not being manufactured anymore! But, I was able to find a relatively small sheet of glass to replace broken pieces. The color of the replacement glass was a little darker than the original red, but what flower is ever perfectly uniform?

Next up was to clean the glass - leaded glass technique requires the use of putty for the glass to adhere to the lead channels, so the putty needed removing. I carefully chipped away large chunks of putty with a putty knife, then used Goof Off for the remaining putty.

Now that the old pieces were all clean, I could begin the reshaping process. Each piece needs to be shaped to each other, much like putting a puzzle together. I use a grinder to shape the pieces - both a larger grinder head for larger edges, and smaller grinder head for more intricate curves and angles. I tend to be a bit anal when it comes to the exactness of the piece shapes, but that makes for smaller and finer solder lines later.

The piece did not come out exactly round at the bottom with the flowers. After bending zinc "border came" (the metal edging) with a came bender, I used the bent zinc in order to draw lines on a paper to create a round edge. So, I removed some pieces in 3 spots and remade those pieces according to the nice curved line on paper. I confess that I watched a YouTube video on how to remove the pieces from already soldered work, and it detailed how to replace the pieces for proper soldering in-place.

The last part was soldering the zinc border came to the piece. First, I soldered the border came closed. Then, soldered all the joints (parts where solder lines in the piece met up with the border) on both sides of the work. I soldered 15mm jump rings to the frame and added a 10mm jump ring (soldered closed) for added stability. I used steel wool to score the solder and zinc border - this makes the patina stick way better to the solder and gives it that antique-looking finish. Oh, patina is merely a formulation of copper sulfate in water.

I added some chain for hanging, and took this lovely picture (feature image) in the NC sunlight. Hope you enjoyed seeing this process! It was so much fun to make, and the owner's reaction was priceless.